Camille (3)

Real Name:

Prince Rogers Nelson

Profile:

Camille was probably the most widely known alter ego of Prince's, and has been credited on the "Sign O' The Times" album, which contained some songs from an unreleased Camille album. This unreleased album was merged with the also unreleased Revolution album "Dream Factory" to create a 3-disc album called "Crystal Ball" (unrelated to the 1998 album of the same name), also planned to be credited to Camille. At the insistence of Warner Bros., this was condensed into the 2-disc "Sign O' The Times", which was released as a Prince album, with Camille credited for vocals on some tracks.
Camille is characterised by the sped up vocals used on the tracks.

Despite Prince's own admonishment of the work done under the name Camille as being work done under his 'dark side,' at the time The Black Album was pulled and replaced with Lovesexy, bootleg material with the Camille tag on it had already found its way into die-hard fans' tape decks and CD-players via bootlegs of demos and unused studio material for what would later become the entirety of The Black Album and roughly half - the darker half - of Prince's soundtrack to "Batman." That film featured Prince's #1 single, "Batdance," the video for which was both a tongue-in-cheek send up of the original TV show's theme and of the (then) new movie's "hyper-iconic" depiction of the story's characters. In usual Prince fashion, this was the one time the Camille 'character' would appear to the general public - in the darker half of the character Prince played in the video: Gemini - visually a hybrid of the Batman and Joker costumes, but for Prince more deeply representing his own struggle with his good, spiritual side ("Prince") and his darker, sexually-charged side ("Camille") which Prince felt was consuming him.